ABSTRACT

As well as this polarization of pupil cultures fostered by school organization along broadly social-class lines, there is a polarization along gender lines. Again school organization and processes can assist this, though basically it is a product of differentiation on a wider scale and with a considerable history. Even as recently as the Crowther Report (1959) it was officially acknowledged almost without question that the education of boys and girls would be basically different, along the lines of boys as future supporters and providers of families and girls as wives and mothers. Thus

…all schools can and should make adjustment…to the fact that marriage now looms much larger and nearer in the pupils’ eyes than it ever has before…there is a clear case for a curriculum which respects the different roles they (i.e. boys and girls) play. (Crowther, 1959:34)

In fairness, this report did recognize that some girls would become workers as well as wives, and stressed the importance of post-school education for girls. But the general paradigm remained. It is one that schools can foster. As Shaw (1976: 137) argues

…the social structure of mixed schools may drive children to make even more sex-stereotyped subject choices, precisely because of the constant presence of the other sex and the pressure to maintain boundaries, distinctiveness and identity.